Promising alkaloids and flavonoids compounds as anti-hepatitis c virus agents: a review

Virus infections are presently seen as a major public health problem. Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is recognized as a "silent killer" because the acute infection has no symptoms, and it develops as a chronic infection that causes hepatocellular carcinoma and liver damage. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that between 130-170 million people are estimated to have chronic Hepatitis C. Plants have various phytochemical compounds such as alkaloids and flavonoids that have prominent antiviral effects especially anti-HCV. The current HCV treatment still has limitations related to side effects and can lead to viral resistance. Therefore, it is necessary for the discovery and development of novel anti-HCV drugs for alternative and complementary medicine.

This review intends to evaluate the alkaloids and flavonoids that have the potential to be used against HCV by looking at their classification and their mechanism of action.

Twenty-one articles from 2010 to 2022 obtained from PUBMED database using keywords such as isolated compounds, alkaloids, flavonoids, hepatitis C virus.

21 alkaloids and 37 flavonoids reported active against HCV. Alkaloids include quinoline, quinolizidine and isoquinoline. In addition, flavanone, flavonol, flavone, flavan-3-ol, flavonolignan, anthocyanidin and proanthocyanidin comprise flavonoids. The berberine alkaloids and eriodictyol 7-O-(6″-caffeoyl)-β-Dglucopyranoside flavonoids had the lowest IC₅₀ with values of 0.49 mM and 0.041 nM.

Alkaloids and flavonoids compound had good activity against HCV with various mechanisms. Our results provide information of alkaloids and flavonoids to the researcher for the development of alternative and complementary medicine of hepatitis C.